Kate Chopin-The Story of an Hour

Shawn Bartee


Kate Chopin
The Story of an Hour



“And yet she had loved him—sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being! “Free! Body and soul free!” she kept whispering.” (Chopin 268)



When reading this passage the first words that came to my head were freedom, liberty, and oppression. I really felt that something was driving these women to feel so passionate about being free. Someone in her life, someone who she cared for and loved at times, and that person was her husband. I noticed from the passage she said she loved her husband sometimes, and more often that usual. I understand that when you’re in a marriage you go through things that will have you arguing and fighting with your partner. To say that you often had not loved him to me is very interesting, especially the word choice and the order in which she had said it. Than she goes on and say what does it mattered, really it didn’t matter because he was perceived to be dead now. All her fears, her hurt, her pain, her oppressed life style, even her pride to stay with a man who treated her in such away, was all now over. He was gone and wasn’t coming back. This story reminded me very much of the yellow wallpaper and both stories were excellently written. The fact that both women lived with men who controlled their lives was astonishing to me, because these men were the ultimate power and force in the lives of these women. When I read this, I believed that her freedom from the oppressive society is the hour that she is talking about. The hour that she so desperately needed and in that hour she conquered all, she was now free in mind, body, and spirit. The freedom that the woman from the yellow wallpaper was seeking is the same freedom that Louise was long in search for. Martin Luther King Jr. once said that freedom in never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Louise didn’t actually demand it, she just wanted it so bad, and some supernatural force gave her that freedom, before her death. It is remarkable, the hour of freedom.